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‘Love Never Dies’ Will Not Come to Broadway This Spring

By Patrick Healy October 1, 2010 10:56 amOctober 1, 2010 10:56 am

Andrew Lloyd Webber has finally acknowledged reality. After weeks of omens that his new musical, “Love Never Dies,” would not reach Broadway next spring as planned, a spokesman for the production said on Friday morning that the show would not go on (at least for now).

“ ‘Love Never Dies’ will not be opening on Broadway this spring,” the spokesman, Adrian Bryan-Brown, wrote in an e-mail. “Further news about the show will be announced shortly.”

The Lloyd Webber public-relations waltz on “Love Never Dies,” his much-anticipated sequel to the blockbuster “Phantom of the Opera,” is a window into the workings of ego-driven Broadway.

The world premiere production of the musical opened in London in March to mixed reviews – some quite harsh – and the word of mouth was uniformly awful among Broadway producers who went over to see it. Soon after, the producers announced that the Broadway incarnation of “Love Never Dies” was being postponed from November 2010 to spring 2011 because Mr. Lloyd Webber was still recovering from prostate cancer and being advised not to travel much (even though his workload of projects, like the new “Wizard of Oz” musical, did not seem to abate).

In August, word circulated around Broadway that the “Love Never Dies” director, Jack O’Brien, and its choreographer, Jerry Mitchell, had left the production to work on another new musical, “Catch Me if You Can.” But Mr. Bryan-Brown said in late August that “Love Never Dies” was still set to come to the Neil Simon Theater on Broadway in the spring.

On Wednesday afternoon, the producers of “Catch Me if You Can” announced that their show would be going to the Neil Simon Theater in March 2011. Mr. Bryan-Brown was asked what this meant for “Love Never Dies,” and, some 36 hours later, he heard back from the Lloyd Webber camp with acknowledgment that the show was not happening this spring.

The London production of “Love Never Dies,” meanwhile, announced last month that the show had been extended at the Adelphi Theater through at least March 2011.